How America's Wealthiest Billionaires Made Their Fortunes

Yearning to join the club of the very richest Americans? Yes, it helps to inherit a couple billion. But for the 266 self-made members of The Forbes 400 class of 2016, what is the recipe for success? For starters, a healthy dose of ambition and grit are essential. But finding the right industry to make your mark can make a significant difference.

Nearly a quarter of this year’s Forbes 400 members -- 93 of them -- earned their fortunes in finance and investments, including running hedge funds, private equity firms or banks. All together this group is worth a combined $491 billion -- 20% of The Forbes 400’s total $2.4 trillion net worth. Perhaps the most famous among these finance billionaires is Warren Buffett, the so-called Oracle of Omaha. Buffett displayed a knack for entrepreneurship from a young age, making money delivering newspapers and selling golf balls. But his real passion was the stock market. After business school he began looking for companies with real value whose stocks were beaten down. During the past five decades he’s led
Berkshire Hathaway. Once a failed textile company, Berkshire Hathaway is now a conglomerate with holdings that include some of the world’s biggest brands -- from Benjamin Moore to
American Express and Coca Cola.

Other well-known finance billionaires took a roundabout route into the industry that made them a fortune. For instance, Carl Icahn, one of Wall Street’s most vocal investors, originally went to medical school at New York University before dropping out (turns out that he didn’t like to work with corpses) and getting a job as a stockbroker for Dreyfus & Co. These days his publicly traded Icahn Enterprises has a market capitalization of $6.8 billion. Others, like George Soros, a Hungarian refugee, have focused on finance since the start of their careers. Soros put himself through the London School of Economics while working as a railway porter and waiter. After graduation, he moved to New York and worked on Wall Street, eventually establishing a hedge fund with $12 million.

While finance has catapulted the largest number of billionaires into the ranks of The Forbes 400, tech company founders and investors have created an even bigger amount of wealth. Fifty five members of The Forbes 400 made their fortunes in the technology industry; altogether these titans are worth $591 billion—20% more than the finance and investment tycoons on the list. Chalk some of that up to impressive gains in Amazon and
Facebook stock over the past year. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, at $67 billion, is worth a staggering $20 billion more than a year ago.

In the world of technology making the right connections early on seems to matter. Bill Gates left Harvard his junior year to develop
Microsoft, which he’d started with his childhood friend Paul Allen (also a Forbes 400 member), to develop personal computers. Snapchat cofounder Evan Spiegel, America’s youngest billionaire, met cofounder Bobby Murphy at Stanford, where they developed their temporary photo and video messaging company. (Snapchat renamed itself Snap Inc. in late September.)

If finance and technology aren’t your forte, the industry with the third largest number of Forbes 400 members is food and beverage, with 42 members. While many in this group did inherit their wealth (such as the Cargills, heirs to agribusiness firm
Cargill Inc.), several have sowed their own seeds, so to speak. Among them is Harry Stine, who grew up on a farm and developed a fascination with seed genetics and breeding. Stine, a math whiz with a mild form of autism, took over his father's soybean operation and developed Stine Seed, the largest independent seed company in America. He’s worth $3.2 billion and ranks 204 on the list.

For some on the list, finding the right path to riches wasn’t straightforward. Take beverage billionaire Russ Weiner, the son of conservative radio host Michael Savage. Weiner worked as a travel consultant before taking on a job at Skyy Vodka. He unsuccessfully ran for California State Assembly in 1998 before creating his Rockstar Energy drink in 2001. Now he's worth $4 billion and ranks 142 on the list.

I cover refugees and immigrants. Formerly, I was deputy editor of the Forbes wealth team, responsible for the signature Forbes 400 and World Billionaires Lists. My stories have ranged from interviewing New York City DREAMers to debating President Donald Trump about his bran...